Establishing boundaries in academic engineering. How academic engineers establish boundaries (e.g., differentiating between engineers and other scientists, defining the different disciplines within engineering, determining the quality of journal publications) was investigated in Engineering Studies (Aug. 2012). Participants were 10 tenured or tenure-earning engineering faculty members in a School of Engineering at a large research-oriented university. LO9 The table gives a breakdown of the department affiliation of the engineers. Each participant was interviewed at length, and responses were used to establish boundaries.

Suppose we randomly select 3 participants from the original 10 to form a university committee charged with developing boundary guidelines. Let x represent the number of committee members who are from the Department of Engineering Physics. Identify the probability distribution for x, and give a formula for the distribution.

Department Number of Participants Chemical Engineering 1 Civil Engineering 2 Engineering Physics 4 Mechanical Engineering 2 Industrial Engineering 1